


Contamination

by Laura JV (jacquez)



Series: A Non-Linear Gothic Drama Hyper-cycle [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-11
Updated: 2011-02-15
Packaged: 2017-10-15 14:18:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/161662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacquez/pseuds/Laura%20JV
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which an artistic murder draws Irene Adler and her brother Nathan into the lives of Lestrade and Holmes, and Dr John Watson balances his morals against the happiness that is a warm gun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Something is going to be horrid

**Author's Note:**

> Heartfelt thank-yous to the following people:  
> [Basingstoke](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Basingstoke/pseuds/Basingstoke), without whose support and thoughtful contributions this story would be an unfinished blob of text;  
> [Beatrice Otter](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Beatrice_Otter/pseuds/Beatrice_Otter), who found a major characterization problem and helped me think of ways to fix it;  
> [ngaio](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ngaio/pseuds/ngaio), for the thorough Britpick & beta, including a lot of class information that informs John's character;  
> and [Mandragora](http://mandragora1.livejournal.com/), who went above and beyond the call of duty and generously gave of her limited time to school me on British legal and police procedures. In the process, she corrected some severe errors at the outline stage, and saved me much heartache and grief.
> 
> Without their help, this story would have died on the vine.

New Year's Eve, an hour after sunrise -- not that you could see the sun through the clouds -- and Lestrade had already been awake and cold for far too long. He waited for Anderson around the corner from the scene, a small private art museum. "How bad?" Anderson asked, and Lestrade didn't bother -- couldn't, really -- to hide how he'd reacted. They could hear the music playing from the murder scene; it wasn't loud, here, but it got worse the closer you came.

"Bad."

They turned the corner, and Lestrade flinched away; he had to look, had to see -- it was his job to help, damn it all, for all that this girl was well beyond help now. "Jesus bleeding Christ," Anderson said, "I'm going to be sick."

He was, in the gutter outside the crime tape, about the same place everyone else who'd been called in had already been sick, Lestrade included. The fresh sick steamed in the cold briefly before the drizzle beat it into submission. "God," Anderson said, when he could speak again. "That's. Something."

Lestrade swallowed, looking up at the spiderweb of human intestines across the pillars of the doorway, the disjointed limbs emitting music, the torso posed like a headless Venus de Milo. "Be gentle with her," he said, squeezing Anderson's shoulder, wanting to feel something warm and living, to feel less alone with a murdered girl caught like a fly in her own guts.

The music stopped, and there was a cough, and then a girl's voice -- teenaged, most likely -- said "Testing? Testing, testing. Grace is my name." He froze, looking up at the victim, and Anderson froze beside him, and the crime scene photographers, and the uniforms at the perimeter -- everyone frozen in the cold rain, listening to the halting, limping voice. It seemed to go on forever, before it took a deep breath and said "I think something is going to be horrid," and stopped.

There were a few seconds of silence, and then the music started again.

"Find out where the hell that music is coming from," Lestrade said, "and make it stop. This is -- sorry, Anderson, but I'm getting Holmes."

"He'll wet his pants over this one," Anderson said, but made no real protest. And no wonder; Anderson hated Holmes like poison but he hated gruesome murders a lot more.

Lestrade climbed into his car -- damn Holmes, anyway, for changing his phone number every other week -- and sped off towards Baker Street. Halfway there, he remembered and texted John Watson.

* * *  
Sherlock was awake and dressed when John came downstairs in his pyjamas. "What's the occasion?" he asked, putting bread in to toast.

"Lestrade is on his way," Sherlock said, handing John John's own phone.

 _Tell SH have a case for him. On my way. G. Lestrade._

"Why you keep changing phones I will never understand," John said, turning back to his toast.

"I wonder if any of the papers have anything yet," Sherlock said, dashing into the living room to grab a laptop. "Lestrade knows me; he must have something terribly interesting or he wouldn't be coming to visit."

John was buttering his toast when Sherlock shoved the laptop under his nose. "Look at that," he said. John blinked; it was an email with the subject "weird murder" and some photos attached. He squinted, barely able to make heads or tails of the dark, grainy images, checked that the laptop was Sherlock's and not his, and extracted his toast from underneath, munching it so that crumbs fell into the keyboard, along with a glob of butter. Sherlock cursed and yanked the laptop away to wipe it off. "Really, John. Focus!"

"There's been a gruesome murder, and you're delighted. What more do you want me to focus on before coffee?"

"Not just gruesome, John. _Artistic_. It's a stunning piece of work, I guarantee it." He looked out the window. "Ah! And here we are."

John finished his toast as Lestrade's footsteps clattered up the stairs. "Holmes," Lestrade said. "It's a bad one."

"The art museum. Someone sent me phone photos. What more can you tell me?"

"Who sent you phone photos?"

"A friend."

Lestrade pressed his lips together and looked annoyed; well, John could understand that. No copper liked spies at a murder scene. "A friend. Right. Would that be the creepy internet kind?"

Sherlock waved a dismissive hand. " _Lestrade_. It's bad enough I have to tolerate John's lack of focus."

"It's a teenage girl, strung up by her own guts outside an art museum. The killer went to a lot of trouble."

"Marvelous."

"Even Anderson wants you there, dammit, that's how bad it is. Please."

"John," Sherlock said, half-turning.

"Give me five minutes," John answered. He ducked into the bathroom, scrubbed down in barely-warm water, dashed up the stairs wrapped in a towel, and was back downstairs in trousers, shirt, and jumper in three minutes flat; Sherlock set coffee at his elbow with gloved hands as he tugged on his boots. "Travel mug, lovely. Thank you, Sherlock." He caught sight of the look on Lestrade's face -- gobsmacked -- and grinned down at his bootlaces.

"You sure you won't come in the car?" Lestrade said.

"No," Sherlock said. "I told you. Ready, John?"

"For anything," John answered, because with Sherlock it was always true, and he didn't care if Lestrade knew it. Once he might have, but those days were gone.

* * *  
Lestrade waited impatiently; the black cab containing Holmes and Dr Watson had to be the slowest cab in history. Anderson joined him. "I've worked out how the music's done," he said, "but I don't want to dismantle it yet. If we take it apart we may not be able to start it again; we should record it just in case."

"Are there any other voices on it? Other than the girl?"

"Just her. It's about a fifty-minute loop; she's on it three times. You think she's the victim."

"I hope she's the victim," Lestrade said, because thinking of another girl out there with a broken voice, tiny and rough and sad, made something knot up under his ribs. He couldn't stand cases like this, the ones that get inside and never let go. He wanted a smoke, and to kiss his six-year-old daughter on her head, on the naked line of skin between her plaits, and to bury his face in his wife's stomach and let her pet him.

He shivered in the cold, shoulder-to-shoulder with Anderson, and finally the damn cab showed up, Holmes tall and elegant; Dr Watson compact and neat. "I'll clear my people out," Anderson muttered, and vanished.

"You're going to need strong stomachs," Lestrade warned, and Holmes's face creased in a smile.

"The strongest, never fear," he said, and then they rounded the corner.

"My God," said Dr Watson, and Lestrade looked at him; his face was white and set, and a muscle in his jaw was clenching.

"Oh," said Holmes. "Oh, splendid." He clasped his hands in front of his chest, joyfully. "Oh, this is _fantastic_."

"Don't contaminate the scene," Lestrade said. "Please. We have to get whoever did this."

"Yes, yes -- oh, John -- " he turned, and Dr Watson was already handing him gloves. Lestrade wondered when Dr Watson had become so efficient, and how exactly he'd come by his strong stomach. "You're wondering why John hasn't sicked in the communal pile of sick," Holmes said. "He's seen worse."

"Haven't," said Dr Watson. "I've just seen enough, that's all." He gestured for Holmes to precede him, and Holmes gave him a smile that was outright _fond_. Lestrade had never seen a look like that on Holmes's face in the five years he'd known him, and it was disturbing.

Holmes went for the torso first, not touching, his hands hovering over the places her limbs had been. "John," Lestrade heard him breathe, and Dr Watson moved closer; they bent over the stump of her left thigh.

"That's peculiar," Dr Watson said. "The bone was cut separately from the flesh. What'd he use on the femur, enormous bolt cutters?"

"Ratcheted loppers, I believe," said Holmes. "And a boning knife for the rest."

Dr Watson looked up at the limbs, suspended in the web of intestines. "Think he used the boning knife to get the speakers into the limbs?"

"I would have." Holmes turned in place, face tilted back, his eyes narrowed. "Fewer tools to carry. Get me a ladder, someone, I need to look at the speakers."

Dr Watson spun slowly on his heel, looking around. "Sherlock, it's set up like surround sound. Where's the centre speaker?"

"Her head!" said Holmes. "Lestrade! Anderson! Where is her head?"

"We haven't found it," Anderson said, but Holmes had already dashed into the building. Lestrade made to follow him, but a rough, gravelly voice stopped him in his tracks.

"Detective Inspector Lestrade?" The speaker was a thin-faced man, medium height, narrow build, looked like police.

"Yeah?"

"Detective Inspector Adler," the man said. "I think a suspect I'm considering for pimping out underage girls--well." He looked at the scene, then away. "I think your victim was one of his. Maybe he did it, maybe not, but --" He held out a photograph. "This her?"

Lestrade shook his head. "We haven't found her head," he said. He took the picture; the girl in it would be about the right age. She had lank brown hair and huge, frightened eyes. "We'll check. Do you have a name for her? Any other associates?"

Adler ran his hand through his hair. "If it's who I think it is, her name's Grace Blue. She was one of my sister's students; she ran off with her boyfriend and I did my sister a favour, checked him out, you know? Trouble is, I found out the boyfriend's a known pimp. Leon Blank." He handed over another picture. "It's his usual MO."

"They ever turn up dead before?"

"Killed by punters, sometimes. Nothing like this. Blank works with this woman, Ramona Stone." A third picture. "Don't know much about her. She keeps quiet. Been arrested a few times, never enough to stick." Adler hunched his shoulders against the chill. "I've been working all night; I have to get some sleep. Wanted to get this to you, though, in case it is Grace up there. Poor kid, whoever she was. My card's in there; you can let me know. _God_ , if it is, I'll have to tell Irene."

Lestrade put the photos and the card into his pocket for safekeeping. "Will do. Appreciate it, mate."

Anderson shouted "Holmes, you fucking lunatic--" and Lestrade turned; Holmes had apparently crawled out of a window and was dangling from the roof down past the overhang. Dr Watson was nowhere to be seen -- no, there was his arm, bracing Holmes's legs.

"John! Give me the torch!" Holmes reached up, and the doctor handed him a torch with his free hand; Holmes bent nearly double, swinging the torch up into the ceiling of the entryway. "Anderson," Holmes called, "I've found her head."

Lestrade turned to speak to Adler, but Adler was gone. Strange; he'd said he was tired but normally someone shouting about a lunatic at a murder scene was enough to make most people stick around. Lestrade shrugged; he didn't have time to worry about it, not when Holmes had found the head.

He reached the entrance, and Holmes, still hanging upside down, aimed the torch at his face. "Who were you talking to?"

"Detective Inspector Adler. Thinks this might be a missing kid he knows about; brought me photos."

Holmes curled himself up and hooked his fingers around the ledge above his head. "It's too far," Dr Watson said. "You're tall, but not that tall, Sherlock." Lestrade blinked, then realized that Holmes must've been thinking of dropping straight down. The doctor was right -- he'd probably break a leg if he tried it.

"Bugger," said Holmes, and pushed himself backwards, up onto the roof again. "Adler walks funny," he called down. "And his eyes aren't right."

"How could you see his eyes, upside down, from all the way over here?"

"I could see enough to see they aren't _right_ ," answered Holmes. "We're finished up here, John."

* * *

John hated, a bit, the way Sherlock loved murders. Someone was dead, and that wasn't supposed to be a good time. He loved being called in, though, because if someone was going to be murdered, best to have Sherlock to figure it out. The poor girl's head was hidden on the decorative ledge under the eaves; he'd known it as soon as Sherlock had moved for the building. "This is _art_ , John," Sherlock said, as they descended the stairs back to the ground floor. "An installation piece in flesh. Did the security cameras catch it? She was killed here; surely the performance was recorded."

"Performance?"

"It's too carefully done for the murder itself not to have been part of the art." Sherlock smiled and gestured expansively as he spoke. "The question is, was there an audience? Did the murderer record it? Was it for the extant cameras? The police will check them; that's what they're for."

The music wrapped around them both as they opened the museum doors. Anderson's crew already had a ladder up; a blue-suit-wrapped woman climbed up to the head and carefully brought it down. The girl's mouth had been sewn shut, and a speaker embedded in the base of her skull.

Lestrade pulled a photograph from the pocket of his coat; John saw a skinny girl in a nightdress, lank brown hair, brown eyes -- Sherlock's finger stabbed at the picture. "It's her. See the scar on the eyebrow. Was she doing drugs on her own, or was she being given them?" John looked again; the girl had faint track marks on her arm.

"She was being forced into prostitution," Lestrade said. "Maybe she did drugs to deal with it. Maybe she started before." He frowned down at the picture. "Something's off, Holmes, and I can't put my finger on what. But you're right, it's the same girl. Grace Blue, Adler said. What have you got?"

Sherlock took a deep breath. "The marks of the ladder on the ledge indicate the murderer was able to reach the head and one attachment point of the spiderweb in one climb. You're looking for a man, five feet ten at least."

"Or an orangutan," Anderson muttered. Lestrade gave him a look.

Sherlock curled his lip, and continued. "The murderer has a strong artistic sensibility. Probably deliberately recorded the murder and installation of the artwork, either staying in range of the security cameras or setting up his own. If he used the security cameras, he has some way to acquire the footage. Probably habitually uses prostitutes, almost certainly has been pulled in for physically abusing them. Possibly for sexual assault on teenaged girls, as well."

"You can't possibly tell all that from a crime scene," Anderson said. "You're not supposed to profile him for us, just tell us how he did it."

John said, "We have a dead teenaged prostitute; I don't think Sherlock is making all that much of a leap, here."

"He's impotent, too," Sherlock said, almost absently; he was looking at the woman wrapping up the head.

"Oh, come on--" Anderson said, but Lestrade had clearly had enough; he grabbed Anderson's arm and hauled him off to the side.

John ducked his head and tried not to snicker. Lestrade returned, looking exasperated. "He's got a point," he said. "I don't see how you could work that out, from this."

"The speakers are wrapped in condoms to keep them dry," Sherlock said. "There are at least three others of the same variety around, kicked into corners. No ejaculate in any of them, all only partially unrolled, but not torn as they would be if he'd discarded them because he damaged them putting them on the speakers. He was trying to put them on himself, and failing. Intensely frustrating for him, of course; he probably intended to have sex with the torso as the final part of the performance."

John felt ill; he wished he could hug this poor girl and tell her it would be all better soon. But all there was, now, was Sherlock, that cold incisive mind clicking away, solving the puzzle of her death. "Brilliant," he breathed, because he loved watching Sherlock work, even when the work was the type to give nightmares.

Lestrade scrubbed his face with his hands. "God, you're more like him every day, Dr Watson, I swear. What else, Holmes?"

Sherlock shrugged. "He'll own a boning knife and ratcheted garden loppers. He'll know a fair amount about audio systems and networking. He knows how to sew, knit, and crochet, but none of them very well. I'll want to see the security footage, if there is any."

"Course," said Lestrade, and Sherlock turned to John, still smiling.

"Coffee?" he asked, gesturing towards the street.

"God, yes," John answered.

* * *  
After the constant cold horror of the murder scene, the Yard was welcoming and warm. Lestrade changed into his emergency socks and shoes, his toes like chilly prunes from sundry slushy puddles. Anderson was off doing Anderson-things with the evidence; Lestrade knew that someone would come by with a recording of the music and of Grace's voice soon enough. He got coffee and sat down to read over his notes, trying to drill everything into his head so that he could remember every detail. Holmes was the real detail man, and Dr Watson would beat the information out of him with sticks and email it later today -- God, Dr Watson was the best thing to happen to Holmes, and therefore to Lestrade's interactions with Holmes, since Holmes had stopped taking cocaine.

Sergeant Donovan, who'd been off dealing with burglars all morning, poked her head in to see if he wanted to go to lunch, but he waved her off; food sounded like a terrible idea. He called his wife at work, but got her voicemail; she was probably having a sandwich with her colleagues, talking about this awful weather and their daughter's dance school show. He couldn't tell her about this in any case; she'd be sick with horror and one of them sick with horror was quite enough.

The afternoon dragged on, and still Lestrade hadn't found his stomach; his insides gnawed at him, but not from hunger. He went to get more coffee, and when he returned he found a file on his desk with a note: _Everything I have on Blank & Stone. -- N. Adler_

He settled in to read; Adler seemed to have compiled quite a dossier on Leon Blank and Ramona Stone. Much of it was printed page after printed page of notes on their comings and goings, more as if Adler had been stalking them than anything else. Lestrade flipped through several sheets, looking at the timestamps; either Adler was pulling more overtime than any copper in all of London, or he was obsessed. (And if obsessed, when was he doing his other work? Lestrade rubbed the back of his neck and shrugged his shoulders. Something was funny, and it was making him twitchy.)

Anderson poked his head in. "What Holmes said about art?"

"Yeah?"

"Hate to admit it, but--" He handed over a folder of photographs; Lestrade suppressed a flinch when he opened it.

"What the _hell_?" Grace Blue's body had been covered in an elaborate glowing maze, narrow passageways spilling out into scenes. On her left breast was a mausoleum, and on the right an angel with a death's-head. Around her navel was a bull's head, with the navel itself as the nose ring; it was the head of the Minotaur, with an enormous curved erection that spurted down the stump of her leg.

Anderson shrugged; he had the look of a man who'd locked his reactions down to do his job. "UV ink. Several different sizes of pen, looks like, and some stamps, too. There's more, all over her."

"You look for a club stamp, you don't expect to find this," Lestrade murmured, locking his own reactions down, shoving everything he could into a vault somewhere below his heart. "This is...beyond anything I've ever seen."

Anderson stared at the floor.

"Anderson?"

He looked up. "Yeah?"

"Sergeant Donovan thinks Holmes is going to kill someone someday." Lestrade searched Anderson's face, but it was still, shuttered. "You agree with her?"

Anderson didn't miss a beat. "Don't you?"

"I wouldn't have him anywhere near a crime scene if I thought there was the slightest chance he'd been the one to do it."

Anderson sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets. "Why are we talking about this now?"

"Because you're not wrong that he's dangerous," Lestrade said, "but I can almost see you wondering if he did this."

Anderson shifted uncomfortably. "Not that, so much," he said. "I don't like how he gets. I don't want to risk letting a bastard like this get away because Holmes has done something ill-advised." He met Lestrade's eyes. "You know we never could've made it stick, to the cabbie. That's what I don't like."

"He's got Dr Watson now," said Lestrade. "It helps." He'd made Dr Watson promise him, months ago, to keep crimes prosecutable.

"Yeah, not too sure about him, either," said Anderson. "But he's a doctor, so I've made sure he gets copies of the autopsy information on this one."

"Good man."

* * *  
The doorbell rang, and Sherlock waved a completely unnecessary hand at John. A police constable waited at the door with an envelope. "John Watson?" she said.

"That's me."

She handed him the envelope with a thin smile. He thanked her and went back inside quickly; cold wet weather always made his shoulder ache. The envelope was from Anderson, and the photographs inside were -- he wasn't sure whether to call them fascinating or horrifying, or if there was some word that might combine the two feelings. "Good God." Sherlock turned around, curiosity burnt in every line of his body. "You'll want these," John said, holding them out.

Sherlock snatched the photos from his hand. "Happy birthday to me," he said, spreading them out on the table. "This is even better than the year I got a pony and it bit Mycroft."

John blinked. "Is it actually your birthday, or are you just happy to have pictures of a particularly gruesome murder to look at?"

"Honestly, do you pay any attention at all?" Sherlock rearranged the photos. "You met me nearly a year ago, and I haven't had a birthday since; logically, then, my birthday must be near at hand."

"For all I know, you don't even celebrate your birthday."

"I don't, but Mycroft does."

John picked up one of the pictures of Grace's back; glowing cloven hoofprints marched up her spine. He looked at a photo of the Minotaur's head on her stomach. "He's obsessed with mazes. And with the Minotaur."

"He is the Minotaur," Sherlock said. "Or he fancies himself the Minotaur, anyway." He frowned. "Mazes, secrecy, unnatural appetites." He traced the Minotaur's erection, trailing his finger down Grace's leg. "Artistic, but we knew that."

"This is all UV ink," John said. "Mazes. Marking with UV ink. Do we own a blacklight torch?"

"Yes," Sherlock said. "Though I can't think where I've put it, at present." His frown deepened, and he circled Grace's nipple with his fingers. "Angels," he said. "Delusion. Vision. _Nicotine_." He began to rummage about, no doubt looking for patches. John grabbed his laptop and looked up the location of nearby DIY stores.

"Going out for a bit," he called, and took the vague grunting noise from somewhere in the vicinity of the sofa to mean that Sherlock was far too busy hunting up his patches to be interested in whether or not John was anywhere about.

At the B&Q, he bought two blacklight torches and a pack of batteries. "Having a fun day?" said the shop assistant, and John made a face.

"My flatmate's completely mental," he replied.

"Drunk off his nut and weeing all over, is he?"

"Something like that." In a certain light, Sherlock's crime-fuelled happiness and flat-wide distribution of evidence were really rather similar to drunken urination.

Back at Baker Street, John went up to his bedroom and took his messenger bag from under his bed, where it lived along with bottled water, some tins of beans, and several Pot Noodles, all in case Sherlock did something exceptionally nasty in the kitchen. He'd bought the bag when he returned from Afghanistan and needed something that wouldn't put pressure on his bad shoulder, but he'd rarely used it since moving to Baker Street. He could hear Sherlock downstairs, talking to Mrs Hudson.

He loaded the torches up with batteries and tucked them into his bag, along with a field surgical kit and two bottles of water. He took the bag downstairs and hung it up next to his coat.

He'd spent nearly a year with Sherlock Holmes. If nothing else, he'd learned to be prepared for everything.


	2. And the rain sets in

Lestrade read through Adler's files while he waited for more information to come in. Waiting about was his least favourite part of the job, and it seemed like it happened more and more these days: more information, more people _bringing_ him the information instead of finding it out himself, more delegation, more paperwork. More synthesis, too, though, which he supposed was the payoff.

Donovan poked her head in. "Found your man Leon Blank. Spent last night in the drunk tank; pretty good alibi, don't you think?"

"Right." He drummed his hands on the papers on his desk. "Tell Jones to put together a team; you go get a warrant to search his flat. We'll meet you there."

She grinned. "Can do, sir."

Lestrade checked his watch, then buried himself back in his files. By the time Donovan rang to tell him she had the warrant, his eyes felt gummy and his left foot had fallen asleep. He gathered up his papers and stuffed them into his briefcase; something told him he'd be spending some time reading in his car while Donovan turned things upside-down and shook them until information fell out.

He texted Holmes; it was worth keeping the man updated. Otherwise, Holmes was likely to wriggle into crime scenes through keyholes and manhandle all the evidence.

Lestrade arrived to find Holmes and Dr Watson already outside Blank's building, talking to Donovan. "Sir," she said, as he joined them. "They were here when I got here."

"On your way to break in?" Lestrade said. "Good thing I texted you."

Holmes smirked, hands deep in his pockets, and Dr Watson tucked his chin into his collar and grinned. "I _did_ wait for you," Holmes said, with an air of offended innocence.

Lestrade knew better than to buy what Holmes was peddling. "Why? You never have before."

"Manners, John informs me, and something about catching flies with honey." He turned, hands still buried out of sight, his coat like a carapace. "I confess I wasn't listening, John."

"Yes, you were," Dr Watson said, rocking slightly on his heels.

"Mmm." Holmes pivoted again, his pale eyes flat in the afternoon light. "Lestrade, I must see the flat. If you would be so kind."

Lestrade shivered, and not from the cold; Holmes's rarely-deployed courtesy was artificial and piercing. He rather preferred it when Holmes was vicious and insulting; there was nothing false about that. As he gestured for the pair to follow him, Dr Watson met his eyes, and he had the strange feeling that the man knew exactly what he was thinking.

Blank's flat was messy, with an overabundance of no-doubt fake Burberry draped over worn furniture. The walls were bare, except for a calendar with a picture of a naked woman with an ice lolly in an improbable location. Holmes leafed delicately through a pile of post, then dropped to his stomach in the bedroom to look under the bed. "Well," he said, holding out his hands for Dr Watson to pull him to his feet, "this was a waste of time. Lestrade, do get me a copy of the audio from the crime scene." He dusted the front of his coat and turned to go.

"That's all you're going to look at?"

"That's all I need," Holmes replied. "Blank's not your killer."

"Yeah," said Lestrade. "I was pretty sure of that anyway, but it's a hell of a conclusion for you to come to so quickly."

Holmes's eyes narrowed the tiniest fraction, and a familiar look flickered across his face; as often as he saw it, Lestrade had never grown used to it. He sometimes thought that when Donovan looked at Holmes, all she saw was that look, startlingly ugly on Holmes's normally-handsome face; in his darker moments, he thought Donovan saw Holmes more clearly than he did. "No use of space or colour. Nothing on the walls but pornography. No coherence or flow. This is not the home of an artist, and therefore, not the home of the killer."

"The killer worked in invisible ink," Lestrade said, crossing his arms.

"John checked," Holmes said, and strode out the door. "Audio, Lestrade!"

Lestrade looked at Dr Watson, who held up a UV torch. "Nothing," he said, and tucked it back into the messenger bag he had slung across one shoulder. "See you later, Detective Inspector." And he followed Holmes out of the flat.

A few seconds later, Donovan poked her head around the doorframe. "Are you ready for us now?" she asked.

Lestrade looked around the flat, thinking of Grace here, cross-legged on the bed of a man she thought was her boyfriend, happy in the time before he hooked her on drugs and started pimping her out. He smiled tightly at Donovan. "Get your team in here and get everything you can." He drummed his fingers on his arm, then took out Adler's card and phoned him for the address of his sister.

* * *  
Irene Adler lived not far from Holmes and Dr Watson, in a somewhat better-maintained building. She was a tall woman around Lestrade's own age, her eyes red from crying; the family resemblance to her brother was clear. "Inspector Lestrade," she said. "Nate told me you were coming by to talk to me about Grace."

"Yes," he said.

She gestured for him to come inside. The main room was sparsely furnished, and a half-full packing box sat in a corner. Ms Adler saw him notice it, and said "It's embarrassing, isn't it? I moved in six months ago and I've still got things in boxes. Have a seat." She curled herself into a corner of a large armchair, tucking her slipper-clad feet up off the floor.

Lestrade sat on a hideously uncomfortable horsehair and wood affair and tried to smile at her. "Your brother told me that Grace was a student of yours," he said. "I was hoping you could help me locate her parents."

"I wish I could. She -- my partner and I run a theatre company, you see, and Grace just started hanging around. We let her do some set painting, and she wanted to act, so I gave her lessons. She never told me her real name, said her father'd left years ago and her mother didn't care anymore, so she'd picked her own." She twisted her hands into her lap. "I wish I did know. I wish I knew anything that would help. When Nate told me her boyfriend was a pimp, I didn't want to believe it. I told her she could always come here, if she needed a place to stay, but I hadn't heard from her in over a month." She took a deep, shuddering breath. "I can't believe she's _dead_."

"I'm sorry," Lestrade said. "Did Grace use any drugs when you knew her?"

Ms Adler shook her head. "Just pot, like any kid her age. Nothing else, that I knew of."

Lestrade nodded. "We'll do our best to catch her killer, I promise you. Meanwhile, if you think of anything, give me a ring." He handed her his card.

Ms Adler took it, and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Grace's--her body, Mr Lestrade. What will happen to it?"

"She'll be cremated," he said, and Ms Adler nodded. She walked him to the door, shook his hand firmly -- her fingers were very cold, her fingernails short with pale pink polish, _God_ Holmes was rubbing off on him -- and then he was outside in the cold again. His stomach rumbled, and he decided he should probably eat something today, considering he'd lost his breakfast outside the art museum and skipped lunch.

He was finishing off a middling bacon butty in his car when his phone beeped; it was a text from Donovan. "DI Adler arrested Blank. NO EVIDENCE. ARSE."

Lestrade shoved the rest of his sandwich into his mouth and headed back to the Yard. When he arrived, Adler was in his office. "What do you want?" Lestrade said, keeping a tight check on his temper. He shoved past him and settled into the desk chair.

"I need Grace's files," Adler said. "The one I gave you, and the one on the murder."

"I need you not to arrest people without evidence, but we can't always get what we want."

"I have evidence."

"Like _hell_. I've seen everything you have, and more, and I'm telling you, Blank was elsewhere when she was killed. Is he scum? Absolutely. Did he do _this_? I don't think so." He catalogued Adler's features, trying to find what Holmes had seen about the eyes, from all that distance away. Something was subtly off -- not about the eyes, but about his memory. He had a good memory for faces, and Adler's memory-face didn't quite match the face of the man he saw before him; it gave him a nagging sensation that he was talking to the man's identical twin.

"You have no idea what he's put Irene through--"

Lestrade had had enough. He felt for Ms Adler and her lost student, but obsessions like this were in the way of good work. Obsessions made you do stupid things, and arresting Blank like this was _idiotic_. "This is my case!" he gritted out, between clenched teeth.

"He's _mine_ ," Adler snarled. "I've been trying to nail this bastard, but nothing we knew was enough, nothing would stick, not till this. I'm not letting him get away because you have _scruples_."

"I don't have scruples, for fuck's sake. I have _lack of sufficient evidence_. I have an _alibi_. We can't hold him on this."

Adler slammed his hand into the doorframe. "Dammit! We know -- we _know_ what he's doing, to Grace Blue and plenty of girls just like her over the past few years."

"That doesn't mean he's the one who cut her up. Take him down for what he's done, by all means, but I don't think he's a killer. I think we've missed something, and someone very dangerous is going free because of it."

Adler gritted his teeth. "Just -- give me the damn files, Lestrade, and I'll be out of your hair. We're not going to agree on this."

Lestrade tipped back in his chair, narrowing his eyes. The files were on the passenger seat of his car, in the battered briefcase his father'd bought him when he was promoted to Inspector; he'd been so annoyed over the arrest that he'd forgotten to bring it back inside. "I don't have them." He watched Adler carefully. "I gave them to Sherlock Holmes." For an instant, something like fear crossed Adler's face. Lestrade gave him a tiny smile. "Besides, you must have the electronic copies; what do you need the printouts back for?"

Without answering, Adler spun on his heel and stalked off.

After he'd left, Lestrade shrugged back into his coat. May as well make good on his lie; Holmes might see something new. Maybe even something that would nail Adler, who was starting to make Lestrade's brain itch like mad.

* * *


	3. Your shadow on my wall

John made tea, once he'd located the teabags; Sherlock had shelved a year's worth of _Shooting Times & Country Magazine_ in front of the teabags and sugar. John was about eighty percent certain that this was a suggestion that John somehow acquire a 12-gauge shotgun, though what possible use Sherlock thought that had in London was beyond him.

"I'm not getting a shotgun," he said, as Sherlock rearranged evidence on the kitchen table for the tenth time.

"Of course you're not," Sherlock said. "You can't imagine why I would want such a thing in London, and you're quite correct. I don't. I want a rifle; get that instead."

"Are you actually insane? I'm not, I don't know, joining a shooting club and going through the whole thing just so you can -- you know what? I don't even want to know why you want a rifle. I should've ditched my gun in the Thames when I moved in with you."

"Don't be ridiculous, John. I have the skull, and you have your gun."

John set Sherlock's tea down on the table by a pile of photographs, and didn't bother to answer; there wasn't anything to say to that, because it was true. Sherlock took a sip of tea and started tacking bits of evidence up to the walls. "Did you steal all this," John asked, "or did the police actually let you make copies?"

"Don't be absurd," Sherlock answered, and frowned at the snapshot of Grace from Adler's files. "Something's _wrong_ ," he said. "Why can't I see it?" He drummed his fingers, fidgeted, twisted his hands in his hair, sipped his tea. He took a report typed up by Adler and put it next to a report by Lestrade, and read both at the same time. Then he stood, again, and stared out the window for several minutes. The nicotine patches stood out on his bare forearm. "John," he said, finally, turning away, "keep an eye out for Lestrade, please."

John had long since given up asking how Sherlock knew when the police were going to turn up. He kept one eye on the window, and one eye on Sherlock; Sherlock paced, agitated, gesturing at nothing. Outside, a police car pulled up, its lights off. "Sherlock," John said. "He's here. I'll go let him in." He got to the door and opened it just as Lestrade reached it.

"I need to talk to Holmes," he said, and John jerked his head at the stairs; Lestrade took them two at a time and John followed.

"Yes, what," Sherlock demanded, as soon as Lestrade crossed the threshold.

"Adler's had Leon Blank arrested for the murder."

" _What?_ " Sherlock said. "Blank's innocent. Well. Innocent of extremely artistic murder, in any case." He turned back to the wall, hands in his pockets; John could see the tension in his shoulders.

"Not the way Adler sees it." Lestrade paused, and the pause hung heavy in the air. "Holmes," he said, slowly, "I've got an itch in my brain."

Sherlock made a hissing noise through his teeth. "That's because you're not entirely useless. Give me everything."

Lestrade handed over a fat yellow envelope. "You're not supposed to have that, and you didn't get it from me," he said. "Though from the looks of your table you've half of it anyway."

"Yes, yes," said Sherlock, already shuffling the contents of the envelope about. "Is the audio in here?"

"No, but come by tomorrow morning and I'll have a CD for you," Lestrade said, and rubbed his eyes. "Look, Adler's obsessed because Grace was a student of his sister's. I interviewed her; she's pretty broken up about it. No leads on the parents, though. I'll email you my report when I write it up but I don't think there's much useful there. But him -- I don't know about him. He might come around to see you." He gestured at the envelope again. "That's one of the things that makes my brain itch," he said. "I told Adler I'd given it to you. He ought to've started in on me about regulations, but he didn't. Weirdest thing."

Sherlock's head snapped up. "That is odd," he said. "I wonder -- " He broke off, staring at something only he could see.

"Can you get us the evidence you pulled from Blank's flat?" John asked, after a moment, when it became clear Sherlock wasn't going to speak again. "And what are the odds of me getting a shotgun certificate?"

"Yes to one," said Lestrade, "and not a chance in hell to the second." He pulled out his phone and started texting; no doubt one of Anderson's minions would turn up soon with an annoyed expression and fat sacks of evidence (or non-evidence, as the case may be).

"I wanted you to get a _rifle_ , John," Sherlock said, setting the file down on the table.

"No firearms certificates of any kind," said Lestrade, without looking up from his phone. Sherlock made an exasperated noise.

"Buck up," John said. "I'll buy you an airgun next Christmas."

Lestrade snickered. When Sherlock glared at him, he said "I'll just show myself out, then. Til tomorrow."

* * *  
By midnight, John could almost feel Grace's hopeless eyes on his skin. He laid out all the evidence -- theirs and Lestrade's -- in chronological order. Sherlock flung himself into his favorite chair and picked up his violin; the music he drew from it was chilly and unpleasant and oddly familiar. "What is that?" John asked.

"The music that was playing at the scene," Sherlock said.

"You can remember it?"

"Of course. But I can't place it; I've never heard it before." He forced his voice into a little-girl's voice, breathless and weary. "Testing, testing --"

"God, don't," John said. "That's just eerie."

"It could be original," Sherlock said, setting the violin down. "The killer may have written it just for that particular work of art."

"I've never known an artist to stop with just one -- one, whatever," John said. "There's always the next painting, or performance."

Sherlock leaned forward, intent. "Yes."

"So what's next?" John asked, and Sherlock stretched himself out of his chair like a cat.

"Unknowable," he said. "Why work in human flesh? It's quite mad to work in flesh at all; flesh decays."

"Perhaps decay is meant to be part of it."

"Ahhhh--John, John, you simple, lovely man, I can't do without you. Yes. What if decay is part of the art? Suppose it is, it may tell us what his earlier works have looked like: corruption of the young, perhaps. Poisonings, oh, poisonings of animals -- two years ago, there was a spate of poisonings of dogs, John, do you remember?"

John tilted his head and pressed his mouth shut over anything he might have said in answer.

"Oh, Afghanistan," Sherlock said. "I must plot the poisonings on a map." He set aside the violin and began digging in one of his piles of papers, surfacing with a jar of push pins and a map of London. "Go on my computer; there's a folder for animal poisonings," he said, waving a hand at John and pinning the map to the wall.

"Of course you have a folder for animal poisonings," John said, but sat down and poked away at the damn thing. "Poisonings - Animal" contained a video of a monkey on a trampoline, six files about cats, a picture of a parrot with a cuttlefish, and there: "London 2008 dogs". He read off the locations of each dead dog to Sherlock, who put red pins in for the dogs and blue for the art museum and the homes of Grace Blue's associates: the art museum was much closer to the dogs than it was to Blank's or Stone's places.

"It's odd, the dogs," Sherlock said. "Normally animals are poisoned near their homes. The poisoner wants to hurt the animal, send a message to the owner. These dogs though, were all taken from their homes and turned loose in areas they didn't know. I couldn't work it out; why do that? The owners find out anyway, I suppose, but why risk moving a strange dog? Risking a bite, or someone seeing you with the dog -- oh, audience, perhaps the audience is important. Perhaps the goal is to be seen, but never to be caught."

"Part of the art."

"Yes."

"Going from poisoning dogs to this monstrosity is quite an escalation," John said. "Even if you're right about him beating up prostitutes, it's a huge leap."

"Of course I'm right," Sherlock said, his eyes moving over the map, hands on his hips. He caught his bottom lip between his teeth and worried it. "The trouble with poisoning dogs is they're so variable. They ingest more or less poison, they vomit it up or don't, they loop back on themselves or don't. Messy."

John walked up beside him and shoved his hands in his pockets. "You sound as if you've tried it."

Sherlock half-laughed. "Oh, yes, and you're next. Do tell me if you feel faint; I'm worried I miscalculated the dose as you're still _talking_."

"Last time I eat anything you make," John answered, and Sherlock sighed.

"I have never intentionally poisoned an animal. I overfed Mycroft's fish once, but I hardly think that counts." He paused, and then said "And once I gave Mummy's dogs some kippers that had turned and some dodgy eggs, but in my defence I was four years old. It's just that you can hardly rely on dogs for evidence. People are covered in arrows and doing a little "here I am!" dance most of the time, but dogs can't be arsed. _Focus_ , John!"

John shook his head. "Only you would think dogs can't be arsed to get anyone to notice them."

Sherlock started gesturing. "People go from here--" he cut the air with his hand "--to there--" he cut the air on the other side, fingertips brushing John's sleeve "--with purpose. They rarely wander aimlessly; when they do, there's a reason for it, plain to see. Dogs just bugger off. Oh, he's got mud from this place on his paw, but plants from this other place in his ears -- which means anything? Do either of them? He could just have been having a lark on his way to his tragic demise; there's no way of knowing." He stopped, breathing hard. " _I can't see anything,_ " he hissed, jabbing his forefinger angrily at the laid-out evidence. " _Nothing_. It's as meaningless as mud in a dog's fur, all of this. I'm _missing_ something." He threw himself back down in his chair and began to play Grace's music again.

John went to make more tea. The ritual of kettle and cup brought him back from _Mummy's dogs_ (what kind of dogs did Mummy Holmes have? Corgis, like the queen? A proper pack of foxhounds? Or perhaps a pair of vicious terriers, to match her sons) to the case. He carried the tea-tray into the living room and set it where Sherlock could reach it, if he felt like it. "Tell you what," he said, sipping contemplatively. "When I go, I'd like there to be more left of me than an old photo."

"Leave me your gun," Sherlock said, "and I shall leave you my violin." He cradled the instrument to his cheek, eyes half-closed. John finished his tea and stretched out on the sofa for a nap.

He woke with a start when Sherlock yelped and sprang upright, still holding his violin. "The _photo_. John, of course, _of course_." He set the violin down and unpinned Grace's photograph from the wall, kissed it lightly. "Let's go," he said, groping blindly for his coat. John put it in reach of Sherlock's grasping hand before grabbing his own on the way out the door.

It was still dark out; he rubbed his eyes, wondering how long he'd slept. "What time is it?"

"Five a.m.," Sherlock answered. "Text Lestrade to meet us at the Yard. Taxi!" In the back of the cab, Sherlock drummed his fingers, ecstatic. "The photo's all wrong, John, all wrong. Look at it, really look at it."

John took the photo and looked: it was Grace, like always. "I don't see," he said, and Sherlock's face creased in a smile. John looked harder. "I don't see it, Sherlock."

Sherlock snatched it out of his hand. "I'm surrounded by idiots," he said. They looked out of the windows in silence the rest of the way to the Yard.

Lestrade was in his office, slogging through paperwork by the looks of it. Sherlock slapped the photograph of Grace down on the desk. "Where did Adler get this?" he demanded.

Lestrade blinked. "I don't know. His sister, I suppose."

"Then why is she on Leon Blank's bed?" Sherlock asked. "She's half-naked; there's drug paraphernalia. It's a personal photograph, certainly, but unless Adler's sister is involved, he didn't get it from her. So. _Where?_ "

Lestrade picked it up, turned it over in his fingers. He looked irritated and thoughtful. "Blank might have had it. Or Ramona Stone, his drugs connection. They wouldn't've given it to Adler, though."

John frowned. "He could have, I don't know, taken it from Blank's flat at some point." Lestrade shot him a look. "You said he's obsessed. Obsessed people do things they shouldn't."

"Don't I know it," Lestrade said.

Sherlock had been leaning on the desk; now his spine straightened and he looked thunderstruck. "Adler," he said, slowly, "is not a police detective. He's been lying to us since the start."

Lestrade hissed through his teeth. "Are you sure?" At Sherlock's nod, he grabbed for his phone. "Donovan! Donovan! Find everything you can on Detective Inspector Nathan Adler. Now." He hung up the phone and said, "If he's lying, his sister has to be in on it. I checked her out; she is what she says she is. So what game are they playing?"

"Maybe they're telling the truth about Blank and Grace," John answered. Sherlock's eyes were closed, his face shuttered; he was thinking. John could see his eyes twitching under the eyelids.

"Oh," Sherlock breathed, eyes opening. "They're not playing a game at all; they're perfectly serious." He leaned over John into Lestrade's space, his face intent. "The obsession is real."

"Nathan Adler blames Blank for the murder, any rate," said Lestrade. "Whether he genuinely thinks Blank used his own hands or not, I don't know."

Sherlock opened his mouth, and then did a double-take at Lestrade's desk. He shuffled aside some papers, pocketed a CD, and picked up a theatre programme and a handwritten note. "Nathan Adler's a woman," he said, his voice low. "Nathan Adler's his own _sister_."

"What?" said John.

* * *  
Holmes liked to give a fellow whiplash, Lestrade was sure, but this particular pronouncement seemed more astonished than theatrical.

"Nathan's Irene?" he said, and Holmes stretched his mouth into something that was nearly a smile.

"Oh, yes. Very good." He turned the note over in his hand, then held it out; Lestrade took it and frowned.

"You know from this?"

"Yes."

"How?" said Dr Watson, bless him.

"The signature. Look at the surname, and look at Irene Adler's signature on the programme."

"I'll be damned," Dr Watson said.

"And she walked strangely, do you recall, at the murder scene? And the eyes."

"I recall you mentioning it," Lestrade said. "I didn't notice, myself."

"God, you people. What I do isn't a trick. You just have to _observe_. Have you learned nothing?" He sighed. "She walked strangely because she was controlling her hips to make her walk more like a man's; her natural gait would be a dead giveaway. And her eyes were wrong because she'd applied her false eyebrows hastily when she heard about the murder, and it threw the proportions off."

That explained what'd been so off about Adler's face when he -- she -- came to Lestrade's office after arresting Blank. "She must've fixed them later," he said. "Something was wrong; the face didn't match my memory." He rubbed the back of his neck. "But I saw Irene Adler up close. She looks like her brother, but not _that_ much like him."

Holmes waved a dismissive hand. "You weren't looking properly, Lestrade, you never do. Excellent makeup, of course, to pass up close as a man; I wish I'd been able to meet her."

Dr Watson had his hands on his hips; he looked thoughtful. "She dressed as a man to throw us off?"

"And to assume authority, I presume," Holmes said. "People are so much more willing to believe authority from a man -- isn't that so, Sally?" Donovan had just come in the door, her phone in her hand and an annoyed expression on her face.

"Piss off," she said to Holmes, and to Lestrade, "No such person as a Detective Inspector Nathan Adler, sir."

"Thank you, we know," said Holmes. "She's a _woman_." He looked rapt. "She's very good. Getting in here, stealing a police car, making people jump, oh. Excellent work."

"So he was just making it all up?" Donovan asked. "And all of us fell for it?"

" _She._ " said Holmes.

"Oldest trick in the book," Dr Watson said. "You look the part, you act the part, everyone believes it even if it's not real."

Holmes smiled at Dr Watson, then: his rare, real smile, not the ecstatic, manic smile Lestrade had seen a hundred times, or the somewhat less common I've-got-a-joke smile. The man looked inexplicably pleased by something Dr Watson had said, and damned if Lestrade could figure out what.

Donovan shook her head. "But how did she get in anywhere? Even if she faked an ID, it's all punch codes."

"Shoulder surfing," Dr Watson answered. "It's how I'd do it, anyway." He tapped some numbers on his phone and held it out to Donovan. "Your code," he said, and she huffed angrily.

"You never got that yourself," she said, and jerked her head at Holmes. "You got it from him."

"Yes," said Dr Watson. "I did. And he got it by shoulder surfing. If he can do it, Adler can do it."

"So then why bring me in at all?" Lestrade wondered aloud, then promptly wished he hadn't; the scathing look Holmes was giving him was more than a man should have to bear.

"She needed real police," Holmes said. "To hold Blank afterwards. She needed to make sure Blank was delivered in a tidy little box, and she couldn't trust you to do that, so she had to play the part. But she couldn't play it far enough, not all the way to court."

"But she could get Blank off the street," Dr Watson said. "And hope that the police could take it from there."

"Giftwrapped," Holmes said. "I've never liked giftwrapping."

"That's because you never get any presents except body parts, where the wrapping is pointless, and scarves, where the wrapping makes it look as if someone cared when really they just had a girl in a shop do it up," said Dr Watson, and Holmes crinkled up his eyes as if he were happy in some kind of normal human way.

Donovan noticed, too, because she frowned and said, "How'd you get him to act halfway human?"

"I beat him with sticks on a regular basis," answered Dr Watson, without even blinking.

"Speak roughly to your little boy," Holmes murmured, looking fond and happy again. It was beginning to give Lestrade the creeps, on top of the damn headache he was getting from this Adler nonsense. He rubbed his temples, trying -- he suspected futilely -- to ease some of the tension, and turned to Donovan. "Right. I don't want us to tip Adler off that we know about her. Send someone to stake out her place, but she's way down my priority list." He pointed at Holmes. "You, Sherlock, still have a murder to solve, and frankly, my people are stretched a little thin right now. We're not chasing after her unless we have to."

Holmes said, "It may not be worth the time, staking out Adler's home. She's very good, and I doubt watching her will get us any closer to our killer." He shivered ecstatically. " _Two_ clever people in one case, Lestrade; you've outdone yourself. John!" He pulled the CD Lestrade had made for him out of his pocket -- when had he taken it? -- and twirled it between his fingers.

"Yes?"

"Let's have a cup of tea and listen to some delightful music at home, shall we?" He stalked out of the room in that imperial way he had; Dr Watson raised his brows, shrugged, and followed, his hands in his pockets.

Lestrade watched him go, wanting to drill a hole into Dr Watson's skull with his eyes. The man looked and sounded ordinary as dirt, but he couldn't be; there was something secret under his skin, something hidden in his nerves or his brains, that let him spend days on end with Holmes without either of them appearing tired of the other. Lestrade wished he knew what it was, and if it meant that Dr Watson was as dangerous as Holmes, or merely very very tolerant.

He shook himself and turned to Donovan, who looked as if she needed several hours of sleep; he was sure he looked the same way. She saw his expression and straightened her shoulders.

"Right. Job to do, sir."

* * *  
In the cab, Sherlock smiled and tapped his shoe against John's boot. "What?" John asked, and Sherlock curled into the corner of the cab, a lazy smile on his face, and rare genuine warmth in his eyes.

"You," Sherlock said, "are like Adler. Oh, look at me, I'm a doctor, I've got a war wound, I'm an ordinary fellow like anyone else. And everyone believes it. Lovely."

John looked at him steadily; he felt the battle-calm down in his bones. Streetlights played over Sherlock's profile through the windows of the cab. "You don't," he said. "A few others. Even Lestrade, probably, by now."

Sherlock's eyes drifted nearly shut. "You could kill me now," he said, "and your blood pressure wouldn't even go up."

John could feel the muscle in his jaw pulsing, but all he said was, "I need a better reason to kill than you being an abnormally messy flatmate."

"Besides," Sherlock said, "you love what we do."

John laughed, but it felt hollow. "You've known that since Day One."

"Day Two," Sherlock said. "Day One didn't give me enough data to evaluate. But Day Two, ah, John, after Day Two you couldn't've done without me."

"Nor you without me," John said, softly, and was rewarded with a slow blink, and a widening grin.

"Well," said Sherlock, "without you I might have died, and then we'd be nowhere."

John studied his hands, listening to the quiet voice of his conscience. He knew who he was, and what he believed about himself; Sherlock knew him very well, but Sherlock did not know everything. "My blood pressure would go up," he said, eyes on Sherlock's pale face. "Killing you. Killing anyone who wasn't an immediate danger." Sherlock was silent, oceans of stillness deep. "That's who I am, Sherlock. I'm not a machine; you can't point me at a thing and say 'kill' and expect me to do it. There needs to be a reason." He paused, willing steel into his voice. "A good reason."

"I shall endeavour to make sure I always provide one," Sherlock said, his eyes shrouded behind their lids, lashes just brushing his cheekbones, the lazy smile still in place.

Under the circumstances, John rather thought he'd take that as comforting.

* * *


	4. The voyeur of utter destruction

Back at Baker Street, Sherlock put the CD into his computer and set it to infinite repeat, perching the computer precariously on the arm of the chair . John double-checked the contents of his bag, listened to the recording three times through -- it made him want to hunch his shoulders, somehow -- and went to study Sherlock's map of poisoned dogs. Sherlock thought they were a clue, so they must be, but they didn't fit into anything. He drummed his fingers on his thigh, thinking. Across the room, Sherlock was muttering and rolling his sleeve down over his arm, gone almost fey with concentration and nicotine. John went to the kitchen, heated up some soup, and made coffee. No sense in them both going insane. Halfway through his bowl of soup, he had a thought. "Sherlock, did the dogs have UV ink on them?"

Sherlock made a thumping sound; probably kicking the sofa. "They're dogs. No one thought to look."

John steepled his hands over his bowl. "Right. Of course."

More thumps, and then a sharp hiss of indrawn breath. "Oh. _Oh_ , John."

Something John preferred not to examine too closely coiled in his gut when Sherlock said his name in that tone.

"The dogs had other things on their fur. Where's my computer?" Sherlock flung himself across the room and snatched his laptop from the armchair.

John raised his eyebrows. "You said mud on a dog's fur doesn't mean anything."

"Hah, right, on their own. And all of them had been several of the same places; no good matched against _each other_. But Grace is not a dog."

"So match traces on them against traces on her--"

"Precisely. Hand me the autopsy report."

John stood up, walked over to the table next to Sherlock, picked up the folder, and placed it in his outstretched hand. Sherlock hummed an acknowledgement deep in his throat. He flipped through the pages, then frowned at his laptop. He clicked the mouse a few times and smiled. "John. Look at this."

John bent over his shoulder; Sherlock had some kind of audio analysing software running on the recording from the murder scene. "There's a lot of low frequency stuff," he said. "I didn't think you could record that low without some specialized equipment."

"You can do it with parts off the shelf," Sherlock said, "but you have to know what you're doing. It's deliberately recorded." He tented his fingers in front of his face. "He wanted us to find it."

"So it's part of the art."

"Yes."

"What does it mean?" John asked.

Sherlock looked up, his eyes bright and wide. "This, combined with traces from the dogs and Grace? It means I know where he works."

* * *

Lestrade had never killed anyone; he didn't know many coppers who had. That was a good thing, he thought, in general, but right now he'd love to throttle Leon Blank. If he were a throttling sort of man, he'd've done it by now.

He tried again. "Look. You're small potatoes. We're not really interested. We just want to know who Grace was with last night."

"Grace was my girlfriend," Blank said. He'd been sticking with that line the whole damn time; he was cleverer than most criminals and clearly not about to believe for a second that Lestrade wasn't interested in him.

"Grace was a teenage girl who thought she was your girlfriend, and who you and your friend Ramona pimped out."

"Mrs Stone's my _landlady_."

Lestrade dug his fingers into his temples. "One more time. Where did you send Grace the night she was killed?"

"Grace was my girlfriend," Blank said again. "If I knew who killed her, I'd tell you. I loved her."

"Like hell," Lestrade said. There was a knock on the door; it was Donovan, with the photographs; he'd given Holmes the only prints when he'd given him the file, so they'd had to print more. "You talk to him for a minute," Lestrade said. "I need some air."

She nodded crisply, and he stepped past her, out into the hallway. As the door closed behind him, he inhaled: it smelled of police-station hallway. Sweat, stale mud, something like locker room mould. He cracked his neck and rubbed a tense muscle in his shoulder, waiting.

Behind him, muffled by the door, he heard a retching noise, and then Donovan's voice. He re-entered the room, where the floor was now spattered with sick, and Blank was dry-heaving, his head between his knees. "Fuck," Blank said. "Holy fuck." He looked under his arm at Lestrade. "Those are fucking Photoshop, yeah?"

"I wish," Lestrade said.

" _Fuck_." Blank shuddered. Then he swallowed, and said, "I don't know. I just get the girls and keep them in line. Ramona knows who everyone is. It's not my job."

"Where is she?" Lestrade asked. "We've been to your flat and Mrs Stone's; both empty."

Blank shook his head. "If Ramona's not at home, I don't know."

"Where did you send Grace?"

Blank hesitated, then held out his hand, and Donovan gave him a pen and paper; he scribbled an address. "I fucking swear," he said, watching Donovan's chest as she tucked the pen away, "when you said Grace was killed, I thought you meant, just killed. The ordinary way."

"Murder's never ordinary, Mr Blank," Lestrade said. Holmes might dismiss crimes as ordinary, pedestrian, _boring_ , but Lestrade refused to see them that way. He picked up the piece of paper; on it was the address of the art museum. _Useless_.

He walked out of the room without another word.

* * *

The black cab let them out at Holborn tube station. John climbed out and waited while Sherlock paid their fare. "Right," he said, when Sherlock turned to him. "He works for London Underground?"

"There's a connection here at Holborn to an abandoned line down to the Aldwych. This is where he works."

"What could possibly have been on Grace and the dogs that told you that?"

"It wasn't them; our killer told me."

John paused, clicking away at that in his mind. "They'd all been in a tube station."

"Obviously."

"And the killer told you it was this one?"

"Yes."

"I can't see how."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. "Our killer likes art. Specifically, complex line-based art, lots of joined things, lots of ends dangling into nowhere. The Underground, it's appealing; it's a form of art unto itself, and it's got more hiding places than nearly anywhere else, if you know how to get to them. We know he likes an audience, that he likes not to get caught: the abandoned line here is accessible. It's only been closed up, oh, about fifteen years. People still use it; film crews and the like. There aren't many abandoned tube lines where that's true."

"So you guessed?"

"The killer drew on her skin. It's not random -- there's symbols and paths. Connections. Once I had a place to start, I could see it. There's a map of this part of the line drawn inside the Minotaur's penis."

John shook his head. "Amazing."

Despite the early hour, the tube platform held quite a few people. John and Sherlock waited as a train racketed in; the wind of its passing blew Sherlock's hair wildly around his head. When it took everyone else away and vanished down the tunnel, he turned without speaking and began to walk purposefully towards what looked like a storage area near the end of the platform. John tightened the strap of his messenger bag so that it snuggled up against his back, and followed.

A nervous, tired-looking man was waiting for them outside the storage door. "You really need to get in?" he said, eying Sherlock disapprovingly.

"Really."

"It's my neck if you get caught in there," the man said. Sherlock produced one of his innumerable copies of Lestrade's warrant card from his pocket.

"If we don't come back out in six hours, ring this man. Tell him I assured you I'd keep your name out of it. He will understand."

"It's not the police I'm worried about," said the man, but he appeared mollified, and handed Sherlock a keyring. John nodded at him and followed Sherlock through, and the door slammed shut behind them. He plucked the keyring from Sherlock's hand and sorted through it until he found the key to that door, and locked it. The last thing they needed was some kids coming in the open door and running into the killer. Two adults, expecting danger, was something else entirely. "Makes it harder for us to get out, John," Sherlock said, low in his ear.

"Makes it harder for him to run away," John replied. _We're more dangerous than he is_ , that meant, and Sherlock snorted softly. "So where are we, then?"

"Holborn."

"Yes, thank you, I knew that."

Sherlock gestured at the crumbling tile on the walls. "The closed-off line goes to what was Aldwych station. Lots of storerooms back here, office space, old tunnels and platforms all carved up. Some bits shut off, some not."

"And our man's back here, is he?"

Sherlock unlocked another door and smiled back over his shoulder. "Lots of places to hide."

Everything seemed muffled; there was only the heaviness of air and the ugly sub-aural thrum of trains. Even the keys did not jangle on the ring. Their footsteps ought to have echoed in the empty halls, but John had learned the trick of walking softly in hospitals; he did not know where Sherlock had learned it. Perhaps it was something Sherlock simply _did_ , his shoes clacking with authority or soft as a whisper at his command.

Sherlock turned on every light switch as they passed. John reached around into his bag, and took out the torches. He handed one to Sherlock, and Sherlock nodded his thanks. "Look for marks on doors," he said, softly, and turned on his torch.

It was John who found the door, catching the quick flash of something under the beam of the torch. "Sherlock."

Sherlock darted back to turn off the lights, and they looked at the door together: it was decorated with the image of a naked woman crouched inside a cow, mating with a bull. "Pasiphaë," John whispered.

"Obsession with degradation and female sexuality," replied Sherlock. "The ancient Greeks provide fertile imagery for the diseased mind."

The door was unlocked; they closed it behind them and Sherlock flipped the lightswitch. John had time to see that they were in a large room, with electronic equipment in piles around, and a stained sheet curtaining off the corner -- and a tall man, taller than Sherlock, looking up from one of the banks of equipment, his eyes wide and startled. Sherlock opened his mouth to speak, and the man reached behind him and threw another lightswitch.

The room went dark, and then a faint purple light shone from overhead. Maps and mazes leapt out of the walls, their glowing trails confusing the eye. Sherlock dropped to a crouch, and John followed, pressing his shoulder to Sherlock's. Grace's music began to play, and then faded out, to be replaced by the sound of a dog whimpering, then yelping, then crying softly. The dog's crying faded into Grace's voice, begging, saying she'd be good, she'd do anything -- and then a cacophony of dog cries. John gritted his teeth; he could feel Sherlock tense beside him. "There," Sherlock whispered in his ear, suddenly. "Movement. He has UV _tattoos_."

John raised his head and saw the killer, half-hidden behind some boxes, a massive chestpiece of a bull glowing under the blacklight.

"Then we can track him," John whispered back. "Go left. I'll get the lights."

Sherlock squeezed his upper arm, and vanished into the gloom. John crept off towards where he thought the man had been when they'd come in, gun warm and solid in his right hand. He and Sherlock were in dark clothing, no white on either of them; they were harder to see than the killer, with his elaborate tattoos, and there were two of them: harder to keep track of. He could see the shape of the electronics bank off to the side, and slid silently towards it, keeping his breath steady and quiet. Somewhere behind him was Sherlock. He ducked behind the hanging sheet, and spotted the killer edging along the wall.

"I do love a chase," Sherlock said, the human words weaving through the space between the dogs' crying. "So satisfying. Almost a form of art in itself."

John reached the bank of electronics, keeping one eye on the killer, who had stopped at the sound of Sherlock's voice. He groped for the lightswitch, and found it; hesitated. He couldn't risk blinding Sherlock, not here, not with this man so close; he had to warn him. He raised his gun, thumbed off the safety, and aimed at the center of the killer's chest tattoo, his mind racing. "Sherlock!" he called, into the eerily glowing dark. "Supernova!"

He narrowed his eyes, hoped Sherlock had understood, and flicked the switch.

The killer yelped and threw up his arms, blinded; John steadied his gun hand and breathed, deep down through his ribs, rooting himself to the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Sherlock, not ten feet from the killer. Sherlock's head was tilted at an arrogant angle, his hands were in his pockets, and he was smiling.

The killer lowered his arms, blinking, and saw them.

John held the gun steady; the killer's eyes flicked from the gun to Sherlock, and back to the gun. John nearly smiled, both because the man thought that John, armed, was more dangerous than Sherlock, and because he was wrong. Sherlock tossed his hair out of his eyes and ducked his chin, so that it fell back down; his smile broadened into something nasty. "So you're our artist," he said, and John wondered if the man heard all the razors in that voice.

"Yes," the man said, jerking his eyes away from John's gun as if he couldn't help himself.

"Tell me," Sherlock said, "what is the significance of decay in your work?"

The man gaped like a fish, then said "You noticed that?"

Sherlock stepped closer. "I've been following your career for a while. Ever since the dogs. Did you move from dogs to women to express the animal nature of female sexuality? Your symbolism is exquisite, you know."

The man trembled. "You saw the dogs?"

"Oh, I'm something of a connoisseur." Sherlock flashed a toothier smile, briefly. "Ask John; he's my tame killer. Nowhere near your level, of course, but he has his uses." He shrugged, softened his voice into seduction. "You know, I'm almost tempted to have him let you go, to see what you do next."

The man swayed, slightly, lulled by Sherlock's voice. Sherlock took another step.

"You know what will happen, John, if we let him go?"

"He'll kill again," John said, without looking at Sherlock's face.

"It thrills you," Sherlock said. "You have an audience, now. Will you go back to dogs? Or will you kill another girl?" He took one final step and stopped, inches from the killer. "Will you joint her, here, and here?" Sherlock's hands traced the killer's shoulders.

"Don't touch me," the man said, his voice shaking, blinking rapidly in the dim light.

Sherlock held his eyes. "Perhaps this new work will require her heart." He pressed one hand against the killer's ribs. "Perhaps she'll be your masterpiece, the one you can finally consummate." His hands dropped away. "Or perhaps not, and you'll have to try again."

"Don't," the man said, flinching. "Don't talk about my art like that." John could see sweat dampening his hair and his hands shaking.

"John," said Sherlock, widening his eyes slightly, "lower your gun."

John dropped his aim to the man's shins, and the man turned away from Sherlock to watch the movement. The instant he twisted his body, Sherlock struck, quick as a mongoose; the killer yelped as Sherlock slammed him into the floor.

John holstered his gun and took a roll of tape from the field surgical kit in his messenger bag. "One of these days," he said, tearing off lengths so that Sherlock could bind the man's hands, "one of these days, you're going to go off the rails and I won't even notice until you go cavorting off with a serial-killing clown."

Sherlock laughed and wrapped tape around the man's mouth. "Why would I, when I have you?"

"I'm not a serial killer," John said, grinning back. "We've talked about this." He looked at his mobile. "No signal," he said, and hauled the killer to his feet. The man cried out and his right leg buckled under him. John pushed up his trouser legs; the killer's ankle was swelling rapidly. "Looks like you sprained his ankle when you took him down," John said, and Sherlock huffed; it might almost have been a laugh. John pulled the trouser legs back down and bound the man's feet, then helped Sherlock lift him onto his shoulders; the man thrashed and John caught his eye. "I _will_ knock you unconscious," he said, and the man stilled. John fished Sherlock's phone out of Sherlock's trousers -- also without signal -- and placed it in one of his own pockets, so that he could monitor it more easily. They set off for more populated parts of the Underground, John bringing up the rear so that he could monitor the killer's movements.

"You're wondering if I actually know anything about art," Sherlock said, to the killer. "Tell him, John."

"I'm not a performing monkey," John answered; he tugged at the seam of his jacket. His shoulder ached a bit from hoisting the killer around.

"Monkeys are the ones with tails, aren't they?" Sherlock asked. He looked over his shoulder at the killer. "He's quite brilliant in his own way, you see. I'm trying to teach him my methods, but he doesn't always understand. But you do, of course."

The killer made a noise that reminded John of a porpoise. He sighed. "Of course you know about art; you know loads about art because art forgery is a crime and you might have to detect it. You know about art, and cigarette ashes, and mud, and you've forgotten more about organic chemistry than I ever knew."

"Really, John, it's too much. I've forgotten nothing of organic chemistry."

John laughed, and for a while they walked in silence. Sherlock's breath was coming a little harder, and once or twice he stumbled under the killer's weight. John checked the phones every few minutes, hoping for a signal; he'd help carry the killer if he had to, but he could see that Sherlock was trying to spare him that.

He'd just taken the phones out to check when his phone vibrated in his hand; he nearly dropped it. "I've got a signal," he said, looking at it, "and six texts from Lestrade. Where are you, has Holmes flipped his wig, where are you, this isn't funny, for God's sake text me back so I know you're alive, Holmes better be alive too."

Sherlock snorted, and John said "So I'll just let him know where we are, then."

"No," said Sherlock, "let me". John helped him deposit the killer in a heap on the floor, and handed over his phone. Sherlock bent over the screen for a few minutes, thumbs tapping rapidly. "They'll be twenty minutes, at least," he said, as the phone beeped again.

"Don't text Lestrade while he's driving," John said, and dug one of the bottles of water out of the bag, took a sip, and passed it over. Sherlock took a long drink, the muscles of his neck dewy and grimy with sweat and dust, one hand still on John's phone. "I wouldn't," he said. "Sally, on the other hand --"

"Lay off Donovan, will you?" John said. "She's all right."

"She thinks I'm a psychopath."

"Well, now," John said, sliding the bottle out of Sherlock's fingers and taking another sip, "she's not wrong, is she?"

Sherlock gave him a narrow-eyed, amused look, and creased his face into one of his rare, genuine smiles.

The killer thrashed and made noises behind the tape, and Sherlock bent to meet his eyes, his smile transmuting to something wolfish and wicked. "Hungry, John?"

"Ravenous," John answered. "You?"

"Dying for a curry." The killer thrashed again, and Sherlock dug the toe of his boot into his side. "If Lestrade doesn't arrive soon, I'll resort to cannibalism."

John raised his eyebrows and made a face, as if considering the merits of the suggestion, and Sherlock started to laugh.

When John joined in, the killer curled himself into a ball and whimpered; Sherlock laughed harder, leaning on John's shoulder, the floor vibrating under them as somewhere in the distance, trains came and went.

* * *  
Lestrade found Holmes and Dr Watson playing rock-paper-scissors on the floor of a disused Underground tunnel, a bound and gagged man tied off to the side, trying desperately to wiggle away from them. He felt as if this was some kind of horrible metaphor for his life.

Dr Watson handed him a blacklight torch. "You'll want this. He's got blacklights set up, but they're on a big board, not the wall; might take a while to find." He gave detailed directions to the bound man's hideout, while Holmes gave his statement to Detective Constable Althelney Jones. Sergeant Donovan ungagged the man, who immediately tried to bite her; she did not re-gag him, but she didn't touch the tape wrapped around his legs and wrists. "We're going to have fun with this one, sir," she said.

"Right," Lestrade answered. "Dr Watson, please give a statement before you leave. Constable, you're in charge here; get Dr Watson's statement before you let _either_ of these men leave. Send Anderson's team through when they arrive. You--" he leveled a finger at Donovan "--you're with me."

"Yessir."

Lestrade strode off down the tunnel, the torch in his hand. He found the place easily enough with Dr Watson's directions.

Soundboard; laptop; stack of DVDs. Pile of recording equipment. Sheet-draped area, spattered with blood. "What the hell is that?" said Donovan, in his ear. "It looks like an operating theatre."

"Turn out the light," said Lestrade, with a growing sense of horror in his stomach. Donovan found the switch on the wall, and the buzzing lights clunked off. Lestrade turned the blacklight torch on the sheets.

"Holy God," Donovan said. She sounded very far away.

"It's his studio," Lestrade said, hearing the amazement in his own voice. Holmes had been terribly, frighteningly correct about this killer. Artistic, he'd said; Lestrade's interest in art was restricted to Art Deco advertising posters, but he could tell this was done by the same hand that'd drawn all over Grace Blue's body: labyrinths and bull's heads intertwined into a vast, twisted erotic display, visible only under blacklight.

Donovan turned the lights back on, and once again, there were just sheets, spattered with blood. Lestrade clenched his free hand into a fist. "Make sure we get everything," he said. " _Everything_. I don't want this bastard to ever see daylight again."

* * *  
Sherlock tapped away at his phone. "We're not going home, John."

"We're not?"

"We're going to see Irene Adler," he said.

Outside the terrace of houses, John spotted the police stakeout. "Oh, that's not obvious at all," he muttered to Sherlock, who smirked at him.

"A year ago, you wouldn't've noticed it, John."

They walked up to the door and knocked; after a moment, it was answered by a teenaged boy wearing skinny black jeans and an oversized jumper. "You Sherlock Holmes?" he asked.

"I am," said Sherlock, eyebrows rising. "And you are?"

The boy smiled. "Irene said you'd be coming by; she left a letter for you." John and Sherlock followed him into the living room; it was empty. They followed him into the kitchen; it contained a table and an electric kettle and a single mug, and it smelled of bleach. The boy picked up one of the two letters on the table and handed it over. It was unsealed, and had "Sherlock Holmes" written on it in Adler's looping hand.

"Is Irene likely to home soon?" John asked. "It's just, we were hoping to talk to her."

"No," said the boy. "She asked me to stay a few days, to give you the letter. She's left."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth, and John grabbed his arm and spun him around. "Ah," he said, over his shoulder. "We'll just be going, then. Have a lovely day." He shoved Sherlock in front of him through the empty flat.

They were close enough to home to walk. Sherlock shoved the letter in his pocket and took out his phone. "Are you texting Lestrade about Adler being gone?" John asked, and Sherlock smirked.

"No. I'm texting _Sally_."

"She's going to punch you one day, and I'm not going to be the man to stop her," John said. Sherlock really was an idiot about some things.

When they got to 221B, Sherlock bounded up the stairs ahead of John and stripped out of his coat. He laid Adler's letter on the table and sat down in front of it. John went to wash; he could smell himself and it wasn't a particularly great smell.

When he came back down in pyjamas and slippers, Sherlock said, "Read it, will you? Let me know what you make of it; I hardly know what to think."

The letter was written in black biro, on copier paper.

> Mr Holmes,
> 
> How did I betray myself? I had not thought the police would employ someone who could see me as I am; Nathan has never aroused suspicion before. I followed you to your door, you and your friend the doctor, and it was I who brought you the autopsy photos. How I wish we had been able to speak face-to-face! That is my only regret.
> 
> Leon Blank is dangerous, and I am sure so formidable a mind as yours can find Grace's killer, too, whoever he or she truly is. But believe me when I say that I am a match for you; you will not find _me_.
> 
> Though I may find you. Are you as lovely a woman as I am handsome a man?
> 
> Yours,
> 
> Irene Adler  
> 

 

John read it, then read it again. "Is she threatening to blackmail you for crossdressing?"

"I think she's insulting my skill at crossdressing."

John raised his eyebrows. "You crossdress?" At Sherlock's scathing look, he rolled his eyes. "Right. Of course. You might need to, for a case, so of course you've learned how."

Sherlock went into the living room and picked up his violin. "If she is hoping to blackmail me, she'll be disappointed."

"No skeletons in your closet?" John asked, watching Sherlock's fingers on the neck of the violin.

"Plenty of skeletons, John." Sherlock raised his bow. "No closet."

* * *


	5. A small plot of land

Between the Minotaur's hideout and Irene Adler's disappearance, Lestrade had had better nights. Adler and her partner, a Mr Godfrey Norton, had left the country, and the student now living in their flat seemed to think they'd be gone quite a while. "On tour," he said, shrugging, and there was no reason to believe he knew anything else; his primary interests seemed to be going back to sleep, and staring at Donovan in a way that made Lestrade want to lecture him.

Lestrade stumbled home just in time to catch his wife and daughter leaving for the morning, and gone straight to bed. Shortly after two in the afternoon, he dragged himself awake, washed, and drank three cups of coffee before he dared get in his car to drive to the office. Donovan was propped up on his doorframe, her eyes closed, when he arrived. "You look revoltingly chipper, sir," she said.

"It's a sham," he replied. "This is all caffeine."

"Brilliant," she said. "We've finished processing Irene Adler's flat. Nothing."

"As we expected, then."

She shrugged and walked away; he settled down at his desk, and looked at the envelope Adler's polite student had given him last night. He needed to decide what to do about that, and soon. He logged into his computer and began reading his email and typing in reports.

After an hour or so, he found a rhythm; Donovan texted him that she was going out to get real coffee, and he replied that he'd buy if she picked up something for him, as well. He was just putting his phone down when Holmes and Dr Watson materialized in front of his desk. "How's our killer?" Holmes asked.

Lestrade glared at the pair of them. "You could knock," he said. "And he's asking for art supplies. I don't think he means pastels and paper."

Dr Watson snorted. "Likely not."

Lestrade pushed back from his desk. "He also told Donovan that you two were going to eat him. I decided that was probably not as insane as it sounds on the face of it."

Dr Watson laughed, and Lestrade frowned at him before continuing. "Well. We've got Leon Blank dead to rights, and Dimmock managed to track down Ramona Stone. And of course your murderer."

Holmes smiled. "No name?"

"Refuses to give it," said Lestrade. "Calls himself--"

"The Minotaur," said Holmes, his smile fading. "Pity. He's so original otherwise. And Adler?"

"Gone," Lestrade said. "She flew out of Heathrow before we even knew she was Nathan." Holmes's eyebrows shot up, which was more satisfying than it had a right to be. Lestrade looked down at his desk, at his own name in Irene Adler's handwriting, on the front of the envelope she'd left for him at her flat. "She bought a burial plot for Grace, and gave me the money to get a gravestone for it."

Holmes made a dismissive movement. "How touching. There's something else, Lestrade, I can see it in your eyes."

Lestrade braced his hands on his hips and shook his head. "Adler," he said. "I don't know what her game is, but she got into -- all kinds of things. She's copied evidence on six cases, and that's just the ones we know of."

"Which six?" Holmes asked.

"All dead girls," Lestrade said. "Cold cases, going back twenty years. Why do that?"

"How do you know she copied the files?" Holmes asked; he had the line between his eyes that meant he was thinking.

"She scanned them in; didn't wipe the computer."

" _Deliberate_ ," Holmes said, through his teeth. "Easier just to take them, if she wanted them. She's sending a message."

"What is it?"

Holmes made a peculiar, unreadable face. "Send me the files and I'll let you know if I come up with anything," he said. "John?"

Dr Watson nodded goodbye, and they left; Lestrade watched them walk down the hall and hoped Donovan would come back from her coffee run soon.

* * *   
In the cab, Sherlock drummed his fingers against his knee and clicked his tongue in rhythm. "You going to tell me what the message is?" John asked, and Sherlock looked at him through his eyelashes.

"What makes you think I know what it is?" he said, and John raised his eyebrows.

"I saw your face, Sherlock," he answered, because in Lestrade's office Sherlock had blinked and left his eyes closed a fraction of a second too long; inhaled with his mouth barely open. The expression had lasted barely long enough to ripple Sherlock's skin, but John hadn't spent all this time learning to read Sherlock's moods for nothing.

Sherlock smiled, his eyes crinkling up and his canines showing. "Well, then." He took a deep breath, fingers still drumming. "She wants me to solve those murders."

"You don't think she's going to solve them herself? Maybe she's trying to be like you."

Sherlock creased his face in thought. "I doubt it," he said. "She has no reason to try to be like me, John. She could; she'd be very good at it. She is exceptionally clever. I simply doubt she wants to stop being herself." His nostrils flared. "I hope she doesn't come to Mycroft's attention; he tolerates my rejections because I'm his brother. She won't be so lucky."

"So she's, what, sort of your double?" John said, and Sherlock stilled, abruptly. "Moriarty's your opposite, and she's your double?"

"Moriarty I hate," Sherlock said. "Irene Adler I admire. She's not my double, John; she's my _counterpart_."

John studied his hands for a moment. "And what am I?"

Sherlock stilled his fingers. "You're my colleague," he said. "My left hand."

"Is that all?"

Sherlock searched his face. "John, I have called you my friend almost since we met. You know what you are to me." His voice was soft and rough at the same time.

"Do I?" John said. "Sometimes I wonder." He leaned his head against the back of the seat and gazed out the window. London shivered and shimmered outside the chilly glass; his shoulder ached, but the rest of his body felt relaxed and well-used. He thought about the flash of Sherlock's teeth, last night in the tunnel; about the quiver and jerk of the killer on the dusty floor and the warm grip of his gun when he pulled it from his waistband. He closed his eyes, so that Sherlock could not read his thoughts in them.

The cab pulled up in front of the flat, and Sherlock left him behind to pay the fare.

Inside, Sherlock threw his coat over the arm of the sofa and began rosining his bow. "John," he said. "Tea. If you will."

For Sherlock, that was very nearly polite. John hung up his jacket and filled the kettle; behind him, he could hear Sherlock plucking strings. He busied himself finding teabags and clean mugs, and then Sherlock whispered "Irene Adler." John looked up at him. Sherlock shook his head, and smiled, a long slow smile. "What a fantastic woman."

John folded his hands on the table and looked at his skinned knuckles, waiting for the water to boil. "You almost sound like a man in love."

Sherlock slouched, tucking his chin close to the violin, smiling more deeply. "Don't be ridiculous. If I ever fall in love it won't be with a woman."

" _Are_ you gay?" John asked, and Sherlock raised his eyebrows, then grinned, widely enough to show his eyeteeth.

"Married to my work, John, I told you."

John grinned back, because Sherlock's tone was inviting, rather than quelling. "Is your work male or female?"

"Oh, no, I can't tell you that," Sherlock answered, replacing Grace's music with a funny little air that John vaguely recognized. "You love my work; you want to have an affair with it and steal its affections, and if I tell you it's female -- oh, I've done it now, I've slipped up. You're going to seduce her away from me."

"Right," said John. The kettle clicked off behind him. "I'll just make your work a nice cuppa, then, shall I?"

"She'd like that," Sherlock said, and John went to fix Sherlock's work some tea, just the way Sherlock liked it.


	6. Epilogue: Toll the bell

Two months later, the rain beat down against the windowpanes; John could hear the trickle of a leak. He sipped a hot toddy and looked up at the hiss of Sherlock's indrawn breath.

"Oh, John. I've done it."

"Sorry, done what?"

"I've solved the murder of Katy Green. Ten year old girl, strangled and thrown in a ditch fifteen years ago. One of the cases Irene gave me."

John closed his eyes. He wondered when the ugliness of the world would stop feeling like an assault on his soul; he'd seen enough, and more than enough. He wanted to rage against a world where children were murdered and hot cracked earth was stained with blood; instead, he felt his fingernails bite into his palms. He unclenched his hands and opened his eyes.

Sherlock simply looked at him, still and silent as the grave, and then his mouth quirked up on one side. "There's a man out there who isn't very nice, John," he said, slow and soft, as if John were a wild thing to be coaxed.

John took a long breath and spread his fingers, feeling the deep, deadly calm in his bones, the taste of vengeance in the back of his throat. And yet. He looked up and met Sherlock's eyes squarely. "I'm not a weapon. You can't aim me and pull a trigger."

"Can't I?"

"No." His voice did not waver.

Sherlock stepped closer. "Someone loved Katy Green. Fifteen years, her mother's been waiting, wondering who hurt her baby. Men like that don't stop, John; there will be others. We will find him, and them, and bring them home." Sherlock's voice was hypnotic; John held himself still, his muscles singing lines of tension along his limbs. "Think what he did to Katy, John. His hands around her throat." Sherlock's fingers pressed into John's skin, light as a kiss, sharp as scalpels. "Left her in a ditch, like rubbish." His hands dropped away.

"You don't care about people," John said. He couldn't remember closing his eyes, but he must have; everything was dark. He listened to his heart beating, thump thump, thump thump. He could feel Sherlock's breath on his face -- when had Sherlock come so close?

"No," said Sherlock. "But you do."

John remembered Sherlock, holding a capsule of poison, and the sharp report of gunfire. This was his capsule; Sherlock, ridiculously, impossibly, his murderous cabbie. He opened his eyes, and whatever Sherlock saw in them made him take a measured step backwards, suddenly wary. "Right," John said, and went to his desk to fetch his gun. He tucked it into his waistband, closed the drawer, and without turning, he said, "We will do this as legally as possible, Sherlock. If we can bring him to the police, we will. Is that clear?"

"Of course, John."

He did not have to look behind him to see that Sherlock was smiling.

* * *

  
end. 

**Author's Note:**

> [These notes contain spoilers for the story.]
> 
> This story is largely based on David Bowie's 1995 album _Outside_ (also called _1\. Outside_ ), a concept album about a "ritual art-murder" of a teenage girl, Baby Grace Blue. The detective assigned to the case was Nathan Adler. Bowie's short story ["The Diary of Nathan Adler"](http://hem.bredband.net/stuabr/diary.htm) was printed in the liner notes for the album. The storyline was supposed to encompass three albums, but the followups were never recorded. _Contamination_ (or _2\. Contamination_ ) was the name of the second album in the series.
> 
> The murderer's hideout is somewhere between the closed Aldwych Underground station and Holburn station, to which Aldwych used to connect. [Underground History: Hidden Holburn](http://underground-history.co.uk/holborn.php) has some pictures of the areas in-between. I selected these stations because there is available access and enough people that a man coming and going would not attract much notice, and yet there appears to be enough disused space that someone could have a hideout there. There is a lot of information about closed stations and abandoned lines online. Sites I referenced included [Subterranea Britannica](http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/sites/a/aldwych-holborn-branch_line/index2.shtml), [Underground History](http://underground-history.co.uk/aldwych.php), and [London's Abandoned Tube Stations](http://www.abandonedstations.org.uk/Aldwych_station_1.html).


End file.
